FASTimes at Hoover High School (and Meredith Middle School) all this week, thanks to a multi-activity camp there coordinated by the DMPS Community Education Department.
That’s FASTimes as in Fitness Activity Sports Times, for students entering grades 5-8 in the 2019-2020 school year.
“The camp is free to all students thanks to a fundraising campaign by Community Education,” said campsite supervisor John Nelson. “We are doing this camp in cooperation with the Meredith and Moore (Elementary) Boys and Girls Club sites and their staff is assisting. We also have coach and student volunteers from Hoover and Drake University. I was hoping we’d get a hundred kids and 118 signed up.”
The camp consists of three afternoon sessions each day when campers can choose from a menu of the following activities: soccer, volleyball, basketball, strength/agility, guitar and hip-hop dance. Try a little bit of each or a lot of a particular favorite.
Hoover coaches who are involved include Jon Rubino (boys’ soccer), Frances Negussie (girls’ basketball) and Will Siffin (football). Dartanyan Brown, a North High grad who’s prominent in the local jazz community, is the lead guitarist, and Kranto Educational Alliance, a DMPS Community Ed partner, is in charge of the hip-hoppers.
Lauren Fedders and Maggie Brooks will be 7th graders at Brody in the fall. The activity camp’s location makes for a smooth gearshift for them from their morning sessions at the annual summer band camp that’s held at Hoover. Both of them are playing clarinet there before switching to volleyball after lunch.
Which do they prefer?
“Volleyball!” they said in unison, without hesitation, when we dropped by on Wednesday afternoon.
No sooner had they set their clarinet cases aside than they were practicing serves, using Dolphin and Pioske as targets on the other side of the net in the Hoover gym, the other half of which was devoted to basketball.
Nelson, who’s known to clown around as a sideline, made the rounds like the ringmaster of this five-ring circus.
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of grades 5-8, get ready for, if not The Greatest Show on Earth, how about FASTimes at Hoover High.
